Fix your home loan for as long as you want - but don't delay: Lenders start pulling their best offers on near daily basis

Apply now or regret it for years – that is what experts are telling borrowers wanting rock bottom interest rates as a storm of change breaks over the mortgage market.

Mortgage brokers say banks and building societies are ignoring the fact that the Bank of England base rate remains unchanged and have started withdrawing their best offers and replacing them with costlier alternatives on a near daily basis.

Many lenders are hiking two and five-year fixes by around 0.2 percentage points this summer, though some have added more. They are also adding hundreds of pounds to the application fees on the new mortgage offers with West Bromwich Building Society, for example, now charging £2,499 for some of its low fixed-rate deals.

Perfect pitch: Amateur soprano Alana Clark chose a two-year fix as she did not want to be tied to a long deal

The good news for borrowers is that the best new rates still look cheap compared to the long term average – and you can normally apply for them and secure a rate now even if your current deal does not expire for six months.

David Hollingworth of fee-free broker London & Country Mortgages in Bath, Somerset, says most clients are keen to fix and that several lenders have withdrawn tracker or variable rate deals altogether due to lack of demand.

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The big question for borrowers is whether to go for a short-term fix for the next two years or for a longer term deal that will set your payments in stone until the second half of 2019.

THE PROS AND CONS OF A TWO-YEAR FIX

The best two-year fixes still carry the lowest initial rates so if your aim is to cut your monthly outgoings to the bone they are worth considering. Several lenders have deals set at less than two per cent, though you may have to pay sky-high application fees to secure them.

MY DEAL WAS GOING FOR A SONG

Low rates and flexibility helped make a rock bottom two-year fix the right choice for first-time buyer Alana Clark.

Accountant Alana, 30, says she wanted to keep her monthly outgoings as low as possible as she settled into her new two- bedroom apartment near the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in Stratford, East London.

She says: ‘The two-year rates were the lowest in terms of what was on offer and I was lucky enough to get one at 3.85 per cent just before they went up in price. I put down a 10 per cent deposit.’

Alana, who sings soprano in several London choirs and is currently performing at the Proms, got a best-buy deal in the spring from Coventry Building Society.

Today it has two-year fixes priced from 4.25 per cent if you have a ten per cent deposit and from just 3.05 per cent with 15 per cent.

‘The deal looked good as I didn’t want to tie myself down for longer with a five-year fix,’ she says.

Best advice is to add up the total cost of a deal, including the fees and the monthly interest over its term, to find the cheapest.

The high fee West Bromwich deal can set your payments at just 1.58 per cent, though it could be withdrawn any day. The Post Office also has two-year fixes less than two per cent, with more modest fees, while Norwich & Peterborough Building Society comes in at just 2.04 per cent with a low £195 fee. But it is only available to those with a deposit or equity equivalent to at least 35 per cent of the home’s value.

Fans of two-year deals say borrowers should use the savings on the rate to overpay their mortgage. That way they can build up extra equity and could qualify for a better rate when they remortgage.

Two-year deals are also ideal for people who may want to move in the near future.

However, critics say interest rates may be far higher when today’s two-year fixes end and warn borrowers to prepare for a possible ‘payment shock’ when they look for a new deal in 2016.

THE PROS AND CONS OF A FIVE-YEAR FIX

Five-year fixes have risen in price the most over the past year and the pace of change is picking up.

Hollingworth says that a year ago you could get a five-year fix from Yorkshire Building Society set as low as 2.44 per cent – so on a typical £120,000 repayment mortgage you would be paying about £540 a month.

Tomorrow, HSBC will withdraw the last remaining five-year fix at less than 3 per cent – a deal that was priced at 2.94 per cent with a £1,499 arrangement fee.

This means that the best five-year fix is 3.09 per cent from Metro Bank which focuses most of its lending in the South East of England. As with HSBC’s fix, you need at least a 40 per cent deposit, or 40 per cent equity, to qualify for the rate.

Other best-buy lenders such as Tesco and TSB have just withdrawn their old five-year fixes and replaced them with more expensive, but still competitive, alternatives.

The big advantage of a five-year deal is that you know where you stand until 2019 and will not have to pay any remortgage fees in the meantime.

The disadvantage is that lenders have dramatically tightened up their ‘portability’ rules so you may have to pay hefty exit penalties if you want to move house before the deal expires.